Craig Johnson: Daughter of the Morning Star, 9780593297254, Viking US (Penguin Random House) hardback

 

When a new Longmire novel by Craig Johnson comes out, I am always exited as it means an armchair trip to Wyoming and Montana. His latest book “Daughter of the Morning Star” has a particularly unknown, troubling fact at its heart with an impactful statement by Craig Johnson at the beginning of the novel: native American women have an unusually high missing person and murder rate with most of the killers being non-Natives, and four out of five of them having experienced physical or sexual abuse.  What troubles one the most is the silence and little effort that is put into resolving the missing person cases by the police.  

Tribal Police chief Lolo Long’s niece Yaya, a gifted baseball star in the local “ Lame Deer Lady Star” team with a rocky family history,  is receiving death threats as was the case for her sister Jeanie who has disappeared into thin air after a car stop when traveling with friends from a party. Lolo desperately wants to spare her niece the same fate and asks  Walt Longmire's and Henry Standing Bear's  to look into the threats. With "Daughter of the Morning Star"  Johnson goes deeper into Native American spiritual beliefs  giving it an unusual quality  but of course Longmire remains his usual stubborn self and soon realizes in order to help Yaya they have to look into her sister's disappearance.  Thoroughly enjoyed my once a year Longmire fix and trip out West!